Hey, Look at Me, I'm a Target!
by Beth Nottingham
Summary: Klaus remembered a time before his father's explosive temper was directed solely at him. A look at a werewolf child growing up with an angry human and a bunch of siblings to protect. This is my take on how Klaus went from being the beloved middle child to being the family disappointment. Contains mentions of violence against children-totally non-graphic. Oneshot.


**A/N: A little peek into Klaus's life and decisions as a human (un-triggered werewolf) child. Those of you who read Red Queen, this isn't dependent on anything from that series—it's a totally standalone project, based on my interpretation of show canon. (That's why it's on its own, instead of in Rubies and Pearls, which is reserved for Red Queen related one-shots.) However, this is my headcanon in general, so if may at some point get integrated into the RQ storyverse.**

Hey, Look at Me, I'm a Target!

Klaus remembered a time before his father's explosive temper was directed solely at him.

There was a period of his life—when he was very, very young—when he'd felt safe in his own home; granted, they had werewolf neighbors and winters were harsh and Kol and Rebekah stole all his toys, but he was happy in his family, all the same. His father was a cold, repressed man, certainly, and harsh with his words, but he had not been so terrible, at least in the beginning.

He didn't remember the first time it happened, not with any clarity anyway. It might've been the first time Kol tried magic, or the first time Rebekah played with a blade, or the first time Elijah went hunting and came back with a look of exhausted failure on his young face. All of these things happened, of course, but he didn't know which order they went in, which one had been that very first time.

What he did remember was his siblings' fear, knowing that they had done something for which they would receive punishment or at least a scolding. And he remembered how much that upset him—the horrible, twisting feeling deep inside of him at the thought of his siblings' discomfort. He remembered wanting to cry, even though he wasn't the one in trouble, and thinking that he would so much rather it had been him in their position. Although he hated being in trouble himself, it was so much worse when it was them.

He confided in his mother, and she'd gotten a faraway look in her eyes and hadn't spoken for a long moment. Finally, she'd murmured something fondly about protective instincts, and that it just meant he was a good person who loved his family. He noticed how she, too, was starting to be wary around his father, who seemed more tired and more irritable and easier to upset with each passing year.

But what could he do, he wondered? The "protective instinct" wasn't doing anyone any good if all he could do was cry about it. He would sometimes try to lie to cover for them, but he'd never been a good liar, and then he'd get in trouble too—a risk he was willing to take for his siblings, but again, it didn't really help; then they'd both get punished.

But then, and he couldn't remember which transgression exactly it was, he had a crazy idea. Perhaps it was the first time Rebekah stole a blade, and when they heard their father's footsteps he'd quickly yanked it from her hand, just in time for Mikael to walk in on her crying out indignantly and Niklaus twirling the blade around with reckless abandon, playing viking, he'd said cheerfully as he watched his father simmer with rage, about to explode.

Perhaps it was the first time Kol tried witchcraft, making a pile of goose feathers fly around the room even though he'd been expressly forbidden from ever dabbling in the magical arts, and upon being discovered Niklaus had taken a great armload and tossed them into the air, spinning around and knocking into them with his flailing little arms, exclaiming that it was snowing, and completely covering up the magical levitation.

Perhaps it was after Elijah's first hunt, and the way that he'd purposely managed to knock down the entire woodpile—which had made an incredibly satisfying series of crashes as it rolled this way and that—and suddenly his father's biggest concern was not the son that had been too gentile to kill a doe, but the son who stood laughing at his handiwork after he had mischievously undone days of work.

He knew he was being obnoxious, but that was just fine with him. Because as his father's temper grew and he and his siblings learned to fear it, with every prank and every carefully timed word and every orchestrated failure, he made himself a shield between his siblings and the mounting danger they shared a house with.

But soon things got out of hand.

It wasn't long before Niklaus didn't have to try anymore—his father would assume he was at fault immediately. The villagers had labeled him a troublemaker, so when Mikael would beat him so much more often than was strictly normal in their village, no one thought anything of it. He was a troublesome child who needed to be kept in line. Sparing the rod would only spoil him, wasn't that how it went?

As he grew older, the mischief became instinctive, a habit, egged on by Rebekah's laughter and Kol's applause and Henrik's hero-worshiping gaze and the funny, long-suffering look on Elijah's face that never failed to make Niklaus double over in laughter and continue his antics. Most of his tricks weren't for his father's benefit, but just playing around with his siblings. It was good to see them laugh when so often he made them cry.

Rebekah was the most upset whenever father would beat him, especially if she thought that it was she who had transgressed. "That's what big brothers are for, Bekah," Niklaus had comforted her.

Kol's eyes would lose their sparkle and the uncharacteristically serious look on his face hurt Niklaus's heart, so he'd try to make light of it, make a joke, or in rare moments when he knew this had to be a serious conversation he'd say, "I'm older, so I'll protect you. When you're older, you'll protect Henrik."

With Elijah he knew he didn't have the excuse exactly—he'd just make glib comments about how it was worth it for the hilarious look on so-and-so's face, or whatever he could think of at the time. He knew he wasn't fooling his big brother, but Elijah also knew that he couldn't stop him, not really. He'd try to interfere, try to do just what Niklaus did, but by now the damage was done, and his younger brother had cemented himself in the painful role of the family disappointment.

He was never particularly close with Finn, but Finn and his parents shared a different sort of bond—the bond of those who had lived in the old world, buried Freya, and come here together to build a new life with three sets of hands. Finn didn't really need protecting.

So, time after time, no matter what anyone tried to do to circumvent it, Niklaus would find himself led out to the barn and beaten bloody. As the years passed, his father's temper and violence grew progressively worse. His mother once told him that Mikael had a warrior's temperament—something he'd had the chance to vent on his enemies in the old world, so he'd never learned to tame it. But here there was no one to fight, so as the years passed, he reached his boiling point more quickly. Then she'd implore Niklaus not to upset him so much—he saw real fear in her eyes when she said that. He'd made an empty promise, or perhaps just another joke, but he knew deep down that if there was danger, he'd rather the axe fell on him than on his siblings.

By now the role of protector was so thoroughly knit into his being that he didn't even realize he was doing it on purpose. Besides this, it felt so natural—he really wanted to prove that he could climb that tree, eat that extra sweet, sever someone's belt and drop their pants around their ankles in a swordfight. It was like he was sweating freedom. And even though he knew he'd be punished for it—even though his whole body ached just thinking about it—there was something truly empowering in proving to himself and everyone around him that punishment didn't stop him from doing whatever he pleased.

In that way he passed into adulthood. Making trouble, laughing in the face of danger, and being pulled out to the barn for a new set of ugly bruises oftener than he'd admit to anyone. Though there were times when he would want to keep his head down, when the little loss of freedom was almost worth the dream of safety and comfort, it was always in the back of his mind that if he diminished, if he was no longer the first thing his father saw when his anger rose, then what would happen to his family? It wasn't like none of them were ever punished, of course—but not like him, never like him. And that was because when their father was the most irrational, it was always Niklaus he took it out on.

He got along better with the werewolf children than his human neighbors, he found as he grew older. They were loud and adventurous, like him, and as they grew older they didn't lose their enthusiasm for life and sense of humor, as the human young adults seemed to do, settling down and taking up the family trade and never daring to dream about anything beyond their little village in the woods. The wolves answered only to their alpha, and they were loyal to their brothers and sisters, but they were free-spirited, like Niklaus. He remembered being crushed when, at around ten years of age, he'd said brightly that he should like to be a werewolf when he grew up, and Finn had dashed his dreams by saying that lycanthropy was hereditary—only the children of werewolves became werewolves.

Years later, when his mothers' infidelity and his true parentage were discovered, Mikael would act like he'd instinctively known it all along—like Niklaus's "tainted blood" had showed itself and was responsible for what a disappointment he was.

But Niklaus himself would come to realize that it was his "protect the pack" mentality that had caused him to go so far in defense of his siblings, and that the obnoxious need to be the most noticeable person in the room when he felt threatened wasn't just some twisted thing he'd made up, but rather a trait that most werewolf alphas shared.

So although Klaus remembered a time before his father's explosive temper was directed solely at him, and although his hatred, resentment and fear of his father would haunt him for centuries, he did not, for one second, regret the decision that he didn't truly remember making, so long ago.

 **A/N: I had this idea a while ago that the most obnoxious werewolves are always the leaders, and this was my take on why that's so. I also wondered what Mikael had against Klaus, specifically, before he had any idea that he wasn't his kid, and how Klaus wound up being the "protector" character in the family even though he was the middle child out of seven. And out of these musings, this was born! I hope you guys liked it!**

 **Drop me a review!**


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